Jan 31, 2013

The Gunn Report

The Gunn Report, an annual compilation of winners' lists from the most important advertising industry award shows around the world, has released its 2012 findings.

Checkout the results:

This year's report was based on information derived from 45 regional, local and global competitions covering TV & Cinema, Print, Digital and Integrated work.

"The desire to do famous creative work is greater than ever, especially given its correlation with marketplace success," said Donald Gunn, founder and author of The Gunn Report. "The days have gone by when networks were happy to simply position themselves as reliable and service-driven. They want to be recognized as being at the top of their game.

The Gunn Report, created in 1999, is based on a simple idea. It combines the winners' lists from all of the world’s most important award contests, thus to establish the annual worldwide league tables for the Advertising industry.

In 2010 this encompassed 46 shows in total – National, Regional and Global – and the winners at these shows in TV, Print, Digital and All Gunns Blazing.

In a nutshell, our function in life is to identify the most awarded new work in the world each year; to identify who is doing it; and to celebrate both.

Jan 30, 2013

Stop kissing frogs and find your prince on Zoosk!

Dating site Zoosk is out with a silly video in which a girl tries to get it on with a real frog. The message, of course, is that a woman's prince will never be found in a frog but just might be a few click away on Zoosk. (via adrants)

Jan 28, 2013

Marketers, I hate to say this, but we kinda suck.There’s an awful lot of stuff that we’re doing every day that is simply no good. It’s awful, in fact, and we’re better than this. At this point in time, we should be WAY better than this. We have the ability to connect to our customers in real-time, and understand them on a unprecedented level. We have the ability to send out complex information in formats that make it easy to consume and understand, anytime anywhere.

We have the ability to turn business around to a point where it’s no longer the brand with the deepest pockets who wins customers, but the brand who is the most awesome. Yet, we still trudge along doing things that hold us back like a ball and chain. I say, NO MORE. It’s time to break the bonds, make some new promises, and move forward.

1 – I will not make statements the brand can’t live up to.

Stop fibbing. Stop embellishing. Stop over-promising. Do these two things instead: Make realistic statements AND/OR Improve your product/service so that you deliver on your promises. People are sick and tired of being let down, disappointed, and underwhelmed, and they’re not hesitating to tell their friends. Falling short of expectations is no longer an option. Meet or exceed, or be called out.

2 – I will not view my customers as simply a means to an end.

Your customers aren’t there so you can ‘leverage’ them. I hate that word. Is there any term less respectful of your customers? They’re not numbers, they’re people that you have relationships with. Social media is helping to ‘humanize’ business, so Marketers need to humanize along with it. The value is in the relationships, not simply in the numbers.

3 – I will not pretend that ‘there is no ROI’ of social communications.

Everything you do has an impact, good or bad, that can be measured. Is this impact ALWAYS measured in dollars and cents? No. But it CAN be measured. The key is to identify what area of your business the impact takes place, and then measure the ROI as it relates to that specific area. Saving time on customer service? There’s your ROI. Getting new product development ideas? There’s your ROI. The dots are there for you to connect, so grab your pencil and start connecting.

4 – I will not brag about meaningless metrics.

Fans, likes, followers? No good. Decreased bounce rate, higher share of search, improved sentiment? Good. Give some context to your metrics, and they actually become worth talking about. “Because of X, we achieved Y, which led to Z.” This ties directly in to the ‘ROI’ situation, making it far easier to see what’s helping and what’s hurting. If you’re measuring something that doesn’t give you some kind of insight in to why something worked (or didn’t), then why are you measuring it?

5 – I will not ignore how people feel about typical marketing actions.

Banner ads suck. We all hate popups. Opt-in is good, opt-out is bad. Yet marketers continue making terrible choices in spite of overwhelming data that says ‘STOP!!!’. Make the commitment to yourself to stop doing things that people hate, and do more of what people love. Remember ‘do unto others as you’d have them do unto you?’ Well, replace ‘do’ with ‘market’ and run with that. If youignore popups, blow past banner ads, and junk spam mail as fast as it comes in, then your customers are doing the same. Stop wasting time, money, and energy on stuff that sucks. Go for the stuff that’s awesome instead.

Simple stuff, don’t you think? You can boil it all down to this: Stop sucking, be awesome, and prove it.

This should be the mantra of every marketer alive today. Now, place your right hand on your business card, and repeat after me: Stop sucking, be awesome, and prove it.

Jan 24, 2013

Gone are the days of the CMO who is not fluent in metrics, analytics and spreadsheets. The internet has made marketing far more measurable (and therefore more accountable to the CEO and CFO) than ever before. Yet I still frequently hear from my CMO peers that they are struggling to find the right metrics that will get them credibility with the CEO and CFO, and show the real contribution of marketing to the bottom line.

I think the best marketing metrics look at the total cost of marketing, including program spend, salaries of the team, and overhead, and relate that cost to the results you care about -- revenue and customer acquisition. Other metrics like cost per lead, cost per follower, or cost per page view can be useful to look at within a marketing team, because they can help you make decisions about where to focus and what parts of your marketing process are broken; but most CEOs really just care about the cost and the net results, not the interim steps. This list of metrics is meant to focus on the most critical measures of marketing that your CEO will likely want to discuss with you.

Here are some metrics I've found useful over the past 5 years at HubSpot while growing our company, working with our CEO and CFO, and talking with our board members. I don’t have all the answers -- so please add your favorite metrics and thoughts on these metrics in the comments.

The 6 Marketing Metrics Your CEO Wants to See

1) Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

This is your total Sales and Marketing cost -- add up all the program or advertising spend, plus salaries, plus commissions and bonuses, plus overhead -- in a time period, divided by the number of new customers in that time period. That time period, by the way, could be a month, a quarter, or a year. For instance, if you spent $300,000 on Sales and Marketing in a month and added 30 customers that month, then your CAC is $10,000.

2) Marketing % of Customer Acquisition Cost (M%-CAC)

I like to compute the marketing portion of CAC and call it M-CAC, and then compute that as a % of overall CAC. The M%-CAC is interesting to watch over time, and any change signals that something has changed in either your strategy, or your effectiveness.

For instance, an increase either means that 1) you are spending too much on marketing, 2) that sales costs are lower because they missed quota, or 3) that you are trying to raise sales productivity by spending more on marketing and providing more and higher quality leads to Sales.

For a company that does mostly outside sales with a long and complicated sales cycle, M%-CAC might be only 10-20%. For companies that have an inside sales team and a less complicated sales process, M%-CAC might be more like 20-50%. And for companies that have a low cost and simpler sales cycle where sales are somewhat humanless, the M%-CAC might be more like 60-90%.

3) Ratio of Customer Lifetime Value to CAC (LTV:CAC)

For companies that have a recurring revenue stream from their customers -- or even any way for customers to make a repeat purchase -- you need to estimate the current value of a customer and compare that to what you spent to acquire that new customer.

To compute the LTV, you need to take the revenue the customer pays you in a period, subtract out the gross margin, and then divide by the estimated churn % (cancellation rate) for that customer. So, for a type of customer who pays you $100,000 per year where your gross margin on the revenue is 70%, and that customer type is predicted to cancel at 16% per year, then the LTV is $437,500.

Now, once you have the LTV and the CAC, you compute the ratio of the two. If it cost you $100,000 to acquire this customer with an LTV of $437,500, then your LTV:CAC is 4.4 to 1. For growing SaaS companies, most investors and board members want this ratio to be greater than 3X; a higher ratio means your Sales and Marketing have a higher ROI. Higher is not always better though; when the ratio is too high, you might want to spend more on Sales and Marketing to grow faster, because you are restraining your growth by under-spending, and making life easy for your competition.

4) Time to Payback CAC

This is the number of months it takes you to earn back the CAC you spent to get a new customer. You take the CAC and divide by margin-adjusted revenue per month for the average new customer you just signed up, and the resulting number is the number of months to payback. In industries where customers pay one time upfront, this metric is less relevant because the upfront payment should be greater than the CAC, otherwise you are losing money on every customer. On the other hand, in industries where customers pay a monthly or annual fee, you usually want the Payback Time to be under 12 months, meaning that you become “profitable” on a new customer in under a year, and then after that you start making money.

5) Marketing Originated Customer %

This ratio shows what % of your new business is driven by Marketing. To compute it, take all of the new customers you signed up in a period, and look at what % of them started with a lead that Marketing generated. This is much, much easier to do when you have a closed-loop marketing analytics system, but you can do it manually -- just know it will be time consuming.

What I like about this metric is that it directly shows what portion of the overall customer acquisition originated in Marketing, and it is often higher than Sales would lead you to believe. In my experience, this % varies widely from company to company. For companies with an outside sales team supported by an inside sales team with cold callers, this percentage might be pretty small, perhaps 20-40%; for a company with an inside sales team that is supported by a lot of lead generation from Marketing, it might be 40-80%; and for a company with somewhat humanless sales, it might be 70-95%.

Note: You can also compute this percentage using revenue, not customers, depending on how you prefer to look at your business.

6) Marketing Influenced Customer %

This is really similar to the Marketing Originated Customer %, but it adds in all the new customers where Marketing touched and nurtured the lead at any point during the sales process, not only by originating the lead. For instance, if a salesperson found a lead but then the lead attended a marketing event and then later closed, that new customer was influenced by Marketing. This % is obviously higher than the "Originated" percentage, and for most companies I think this should be between 50% and 99%.

Jan 23, 2013

Help Remedies released a new product campaign, Help I'm Horny, I love this campaign, it has everything you learn in a branding book chapter "how to build a cult brand". Help Remedies have achieved this, if I'm not mistaken, by creating the first premium condom brand. Help Remedies accomplish that by involving the consumer in a classic atmosphere, using erotic post-renascence as their theme for the website. I give congrats to them for not using the sex "bait" in a vulgar way, as most advertisers use. With this strategy they moved away from associations like a condom to be used to have sex in a cheap hotel, and they do it, without passing a snob image. Other smart move by Help Remedies is the exclusivity emotion they pass, this is a crucial step in order to built a brand clan. If you want to enter this clan, you have to prove that you are worth it, and which men says no to a challenge about his sex abilities. In sum this is a well enticing branding campaign using the apple sexiness move, but for condoms.

An Excerpt from the creativity-online article:

Are you a sexpert, well versed in the art of bedroom (and other-room) moves? Then Help Remedies might just consider you cool enough to use its latest product, "Help, I'm Horny." The design-minded OTC pharmaceuticals company has a new product in the prophylactic category, a package of two lubricated thin, natural latex condoms that promise to be as inconspicuous as possible.Like the girl you wanted but never could manage to get, "Help, I'm Horny" is picky -- the brand will retail the product only at "fine hotels," including select W Hotels, where, evidently, sex is bound to be wonderful. The product is placed in the mini-bar inside guests' rooms. Richard Fine, co-founder at Help, said that "the context in which you discover a product is extremely important," which was why they decided to go the hotel-distribution route for the new line, which he terms "more special," than a headache remedy. Other Help Remedies products are generally available in pharmacies. Nathan Frank, the company's co-founder and CD, in a statement said "We're not interested in making condoms for pedestrian, uninspired sex."The other place you can get your hands on the product is on the site, HelpImHorny.com, where interested customers can apply for approval by divulging their fantasies, commenting on past experiences, and reviewing erotic artworks. Individuals that pass the "rigorous" test will be given a link to purchase "Help, I'm Horny" online. And yes, it is actually a rigorous approval process, according to Fine. Three people are going to be charged with reviewing the application. "We will award the product to those who have sexually inventive and impressive resumes," said Fine. (via creativity online)

Jan 22, 2013

The story of the clock that challenges the ordinary.

'Clock' is the new Guinness advert released in January 2013. 'Clock' celebrates the attitude shared by Guinness and its drinkers -- that you get more out of life by putting more in. It is set in Bohemia in the 1890s and tells the story of a town's clock that doesn't settle for the ordinary; the clock starts to control time to enhance the townspeople's days; accelerating time to make a task go faster, reversing time to avoid an unfortunate event and pausing time to allow a precious moment to last longer.

It's sad when you see another brand losing is DNA, just to trying to reach a few more consumers.

Ok, I assume that is video is quite good, tough it not transmits the traditional Irish values that the brand stands for, and because I hate seeing a brand selling is core values this ad is Bull... wait for it... Shit.

Some you tube comments, to prove what I'm saying:

Looks very "flat" to me.

Come to Dublin and get﻿ the the life!

Irish beer?﻿

Guinness is meant﻿ to be bleeding Irish!!! Nothing in this advertisement represents Ireland HOME of GUINNESS! Video clip is really well done but personally think it has nothing whatsoever got to do with Guinness or its origin.

Jan 21, 2013

Nielsen released a report about social, I'm gonna share with you some excerpts:

Social media is coming of age. Since the emergence of the first social media networks some two decades ago, social media has continued to evolve and offer consumers around the world new and meaningful ways to engage with the people, events and brands that matter to them. Now, years later, social media is still growing rapidly, becoming an integral part of our daily lives. Social networking is now truly a global phenomenon.

This report reveals insights such as:

What's driving the continued growth of social media?

How is consumer usage of social media evolving?

How is social media impacting marketing?

Who is using Pinterest?

Social Media is coming of age

(...)social media has continued to evolve and offer consumers around the world new and meaningful ways to engage with the people, events, and brands that matter to them. Now years later, social media is still growing rapidly and has become an integral part of our daily lives. Today, social networking is truly a global phenomenon.

What's driving the continued growth of social media?

Mobile
More people are using smartphones and tablets to access social media. The personal computer is still at the center of the social networking experience, but consumers are increasingly looking to other devices to connect on social media. (...)

Proliferation
New social media sites continue to emerge and catch on. The number of social media networks consumer can choose from has exploded, and too many sites to count are adding social features or integration.

How is consumer usage of social media evolving?

The global living room

SocialTv is on the rise. The skyrocketing adoption and use of social media among consumers is transforming TV-watching into a more immediate and shared experience. (...) ,consumers around the world used social media to engage with everyone from close friends to complete strangers, revolutionizing the television viewing experience.

Social care

Social care is transforming customer service. (...) In fact, one in three social media users say they prefer to use social media rather than the phone for customer service issues.

How is social media Impact marketing?

Social word-of-mouth

Social media enables consumers to generate and tap into the opinions of an exponentially larger universe. (...)

Hyper-informed consumers

Social media is transforming the way that consumers across the globe make purchase decisions. Consumers are using social media to learn about other consumers experiences, (...)

Opportunity for engament

Consumer attitudes toward advertising on social media are still evolving. Though roughly one-third of social media users find ads on social networking sites more annoying than other types of internet advertisements, research suggest that there are opportunities for marketers to engage with consumers via social media.

Jan 20, 2013

A Different Incentive For Sharing

One of the real turn-offs about social media in general – and Facebook in particular – is that sharing has become so selfish.

As I think lots of us feel as we thumb down through the feed, the pictures we see and the clever quips we read bear very little resemblance to life as it's actually lived.

Because, of course, the feed doesn't present life as it's actually lived. It presents a version of life that we imagine others will look upon favorably. A life in which us Gen X-ers lovingly and one-thousand percent engagingly create crafts with our children on a Saturday afternoon, and one in which the Millenials apparently only eat appetizers that have been sculpted into museum-ready formats.

In the context that's come to dominate Facebook, sharing is no longer a word that suggests I'm doing something for you. When I share, it's only about you in that it's about what I think you're going to think of me.

And that's why I'm actually optimistic about how Graph Search could change Facebook (and by extension all social spaces) for the better, creating a new rationale for sharing that truly is about you.

If I'm interpreting Facebook's teaser video about Graph Search correctly than you should be able to do a search like "books my friends have read in the last year."

Now if you're a friend of mine and you did that search today (assuming Graph Search was up and running) you'd see nothing from me, even though I'd be happy to give you a recommendation.

Looking for a great novel? Try Capital, by John Lanchester. Kind of reminded of Bonfire of the Vanities in that it captures the essence of a city (London as opposed to New York) at a moment in time by bringing to life a sprawling cast of characters into one coherent, fascinating story.

Maybe you're a work friend and want some inspiration for the office? Well you should read The Art of the Pitch by Peter Coughter. It'll change the way you present for the better if you do what the man says.

My point is that even though I love these books, I wouldn't share that on Facebook today because I'm censoring myself.

The first thought I have is, what would people think if I posted this? That I'm pretentious? A snob? The kind of person who wants the filtered, curated version of my life to say "this guys is well-read?"

It's all too exhausting, to think about the me I want you to see, and so I just don't share it all.

But with Graph Search what I can see is a new rationale for sharing. One that is much more authentic. Much more human. One that actually is about you.

You see, if I thought that my friends were likely to turn to Graph Search as a way to get book recommendations, I actually would take the time to go and Like the books I'd recommend. Might even write up a little synopsis and review while I'm at it.

I wouldn't feel self-conscious about it, either, because my motivation would actually be to help, not promote myself.

If we all started to share (at least some of the time) with the notion of helping our friends find an answer they're looking for, that would certainly make Facebook a more authentically human environment than it is today.

It would be a place I'd want to spend more time, and contribute more of myself to. Which for Facebook makes it the best kind of product development possible: one that is commercially attractive, and also helps people get more out of the service than they did before.

Jan 17, 2013

No, literally taking it over, to the point where Brits will soon be forced to refer to their days off as The Guardian and Observer Weekend.™

In this wonderfully over-the-top new clip below for its weekend publications, The Guardianenvisions a world in which it "owns" all weekend activities and conversations. "Never before has a company owned a day, let alone two days together at the end of the week," intones the faux trailer's Hollywood-esque narrator. "How do you 'own a weekend'? You don't. We do."

While BBH doesn't deliver the kind of gravitas here that earned The Guardian top ad honors last year—Adweek chose "Three Little Pigs" as the best commercial of 2012—this spot is still a great example of how its approach to marketing is keeping the newspaper front and center in the cultural conversation.

Jan 16, 2013

WWF Canada is reminding people to lower heat against climate change, by creating a 'call center' of grannies to urge everyone to wear a sweater. At sweaterday.com, visitors can sign up to get a call, text or email from a real granny of their choice, reminding them to wrap up warm, for WWF National Sweater Day on Feb 7th. While a similar campaign has run before, this year, there's a personalized social media element; people can nominate their own grandmas, with a radio ad inviting grannies to call and audition. The best granny auditions will be posted on WWF Canada's Facebook page and invited to join the call center team for National Sweater Day. (via creativity online)

Jan 11, 2013

The Christmas greeting prepared by the airline airBaltic is the first animation reel in the world that is compiled of x-ray scans from the airport luggage examination area. In producing the animation reel, the airport luggage scanning device was used, through which passengers' bags are moved and checked on a daily basis.

Filming took place at the International Airport Riga, using the conveyor belts of the luggage and scanning device. Each frame was set separately on the conveyor belt, and scanned with an x-ray, producing more than 150 images. For the filming, 10 suitcases, 12 keys, 2 hairdryers and hairbrushes, 3 combs, various coins worth 10 euros, 4 boxes of crayons, 5 headphones, 32 items of jewellery, 16 paper clips, as well as various specially prepared metal, plastic and paper objects were used. The movie was prepared using the stop motion animation technique, which creates the illusion that static objects are moving on their own. The creation process for such a video is very time consuming, because it is compiled from many static photos.